


Monstrous Sovereign

by distorted_reflection



Category: Bleach
Genre: AU, Angst, Cannibalism, Character Study, Eating Disorder, Gen, Mind Control of sorts?, Self-Harm, idk - Freeform, just be careful reading this, minor character death?, self hatred
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 07:21:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8135234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distorted_reflection/pseuds/distorted_reflection
Summary: He's walking with a hungry void inside him, a black hole that is the princess of monsters. (Kisuke is horrifyingly more messed up than anyone realises and more dangerous than anything that exists. It destroys him from the inside.)





	

She talked to him, murmuring in the depths of his mind as long as he could remember. The Crimson Princess.

He’s fifteen and Her whispers had become louder when he had died, crawling, hateful shadows that he ignored with practiced ease, now. He can make out separate words and phrases out of the repetitions and iterations of the same words, same meanings.

**_....freak….stop….monster….listen….eat...._ **

He’s sixteen and surviving in the Rukongai is hard. District Zaraki is harder than anything he could have ever imagined. Food is scarce, and he learns to make do with little. His newly discovered abilities help get food, but make him feel hunger of a sort he has never felt before. He learns that quickly. He avoids other people, out of sheer fear. For his own existence… and for what could happen if his princess ever took control. She’s a terrifying force of crimson in his head.

**_….feedme….or else….i am starving, feed me…._ **

He looks sixteen and is thirty, and he learns about the Shinigami Academy, the application exam. About the wonderful, relatively carefree life of the Shinigami Academy. **_….go…._ **

He gets in easily, his abilities honed by the difficult task of surviving Zaraki. Benihime now exists as a sword, too. A sword with a terrible, terrible power, hungry and raving for the souls full of delicious reiatsu that is **all around** the two of them. **_FEED ME! LET ME RIP AND TEAR AND CONSUME, LEAVING NOTHING! You useless freak, I am a princess, you must obey me, idiot failure, let me EAT_ ** He eats real food and she doesn’t get what she wants, and she complains and swears and curses, and spews vile and poison into his mind.

It’s been a year and a half, and he is a member of the Second Division, hand-picked by the Captain for his ingenuity and brilliance.

Then comes the first assassination. He’s sent out, alone. **_Yesyesyes, now let me OUT! Let me feedriptearkilllll…_ ** He’s at the bed, the target is asleep, and then control is _yanked_ away from him, and now he’s no longer the one deciding what to do. Benihime moves, quick and fluid and hungry, apex predator. The blade flashes to cut open the throat of the victim , and she leans forward as the man struggles, easily pinning him down with unnatural strength and drinking the hot blood, draining reiatsu along with it. The blood is salty and coppery, hot and thick and fresh, and the reiatsu is bright and shining and sunlight-like and _more delicious and filling and wonderful than anything he has ever tasted_. And then she’s sinking teeth into the flesh as well, biting and swallowing chunks of the now almost dead target, who’s torn out throat stops him from screaming in agony, and Kisuke’s shrieking and crying in his Inner World, as the reiatsu and blood and flesh are in his mouth, and then _in him_  and he can feel them dissolving, being assimilated. Benihime rips the heart out with bare hands, and crunches down the bones of the spine and ribs as well, breaking them down as easily as bread with teeth that are no longer, in any way, human.

Then the victim breaks down into pure reiatsu and she draws it all inside in a breath, consuming the soul entirely. Then she cleans everything up that needs cleaning, putting victim’s clothes away, as though nothing has happened. She’s still in control when the time to deliver the report comes, as Kisuke’s near catatonic in the depths of his own mind. He’s shaking and crying and locked away, and he is horrifiedguitydisgusted at what he has done, the monstrous atrocity he has committed. He’s destroyed… no, _eaten_ a soul, giving it no chance to ever exist again, and he can feel the power still swirling in him, and he feels the insatiable hunger for more, coming from Benihime… and from deep within himself, too, and he feels all the worse for it.

Once he’s alone in his room, Benihime lets him take control again. Tears pour down his face and he collapses to the floor, retching and throwing up bile. His skin is crawling and hurting and he feels disgusted by his body to the very core, and he tears at his skin with his nails, enough to leave bruises and draw blood. Benihime is silent, savouring the meal.

Hours later, he’s just lying there. Empty and drained and tired.

Days later, he still can’t sleep, knowing he’ll simply dream of what he’d done. Benihime has resumed whispering to him, hungry once more, but he’s so revolted he can shut her out.

It doesn’t last.

He rises among the ranks, up and up and up. Assassinations are… he can’t remember them now (except in dreams, where Benihime shows them, hateful of him and happy at his reaction), only the aftermath where he retches and shakes and cries, fading blood on his lips and foreign reiatsu being digested inside him. (it feels so good when the monstrous princess feeds, and he tears himself apart with guilthorrordisgust) He can’t stop her taking control of his body, fluidly moving and killing and drinking the reiatsu of the victims dry, eating their souls and bodies both, except they are one and the same… It’s better than the alternative, where she could go on rampages, draining and eating indiscriminately, preying on all shinigami foolish enough to come near as she sought captains that could, perhaps, satisfy her endless appetite.

He hates himself, hates his weakness and cowardice and her irresistible and insatiable hunger, her overpowering presence that can shut his control down and take him over completely, unmake him, and his blood stains her blade as often as anybody else's. It’s neater than nails and teeth, easier to control. And that’s what he wants. Control. He should be sovereign of his body, yet the princess usurps control as easy as breathing. He wondered, often, if maybe deep inside this was what he truly desired.

Eating normal food is hard now, swallowing difficult and too reminiscent of his nightmares. (reality) He's starving.

Soon enough he is third seat (only a few short decades, two years of aging, and he’s gone from freshly dead to prison warden), and a good friend of the new Captain, Shihouin Yoruichi.  She sees him after an assassination once, weak and pale, weeping bloody tears and lips glistening with crimson blood that isn’t his own. She doesn’t understand, doesn’t ask about what brought him into this state, but she keeps him away from assassinations afterwards, not wanting to hurt him.

Lying in his rooms at night, hunger for blood and souls clawing at his insides, he realises he could do it. Balance that hunger with a little less real food, and he’d learn to deal with both. To cope with the wrongness he was made of. **_Feed me, let me riptearkillconsume, how dare you stop giving me my due! You should starve too, see what it feels like._ **

Then Benihime learns to drain reiatsu remotely, without ever needing to be released, without needing to kill. He gasps in relief when she gets to feed again, agonising hunger momentarily lifted. And the Maggot’s Nest is full of those with energy to spare. He leeches on them, sparingly, trying to do them no harm, and only ever going after those convicted of crimes more severe than seeing the faults of Seireitei. The princess is not happy, hungry as ever, but it’s easy to keep her at bay when they, together, eat bits of imprisoned souls here and there. He’s sovereign, and he can prove it now. It’s easier to ignore the small pangs of guilt when he eats too much and the prisoners scream in agony (if they aren’t drugged to deep sleep by Benihime who refuses anything less than fresh blood). He notices, how he is less… human during the feeding. (His eyes gleam silver-white-LIGHT-DARKNESS with no pupils or irises, teeth sharp and long and more than can ever fit in a human mouth, fingers long and clawed, more shiftschangesmutations rippling deep in his bones, the potential monstrosity beyond reality) Sleep is an elusive heaven he hasn’t truly achieved in years. **_I want flesh, GIVE ME FLESH AND BONE._ ** That tribute he refuses her. **_Scum murderer killer freak, LET ME TAKE CONTROL AND SHOW YOU HOW IT’S DONE_ **

Then, as captain (and the true form of the princess eats reality itself, a meal more filling and horrifying than he could have imagined. he is a monster deep inside, and every second in Bankai threatens to transform him to the _thing_ he can vaguely sense, the  _titan abomination_ ), excuses to visit the Maggot’s Nest are few and far between, and Benihime’s hungrier than she’s ever been before. There’s a slight haze to everything, now. His muscles and bones and insides ache with phantom hunger that is deeper than what any sword can ever reach, but the cold bite of steel still offers a momentary distraction. He still wishes to shred his skin and rip through flesh to dig _it_ out from inside him, to rip Benihime from the depths of himself, but he restrains to just gouging his skin, pulling his hair and digging his hands into conjured ice, the cold biting them but leaving no marks for later. Physical agony to distract from the mental. It _works_.

Then he’s exiled and the hunger reaches a new level. He would never prey upon his friends, his responsibilities, and the mortals are too weak to offer sustenance and survive the feeding. And too innocent. Benihime is enraged. **_You no longer feed me? FINE. I’ll be truthful now. You know how much you eat, glutton? Too much. Look at yourself in the mirror, you know it is the truth. And what do you do to earn that? Nothing._ **

Day in, day out. Relentlessly, she speaks to him. Repeats and explains and reiterates. _You’re right_ , he thinks eventually. He doesn’t deserve the food. His skin is littered with marks of his battle with the unfillable void trying to come to the surface, and it isn’t enough to _punish_ him, as well. He needs something else for that.

And so he starves physically, too, a new method of fighting the princess of monsters. It’s easy, only a little change from the rather sporadic eating schedule he has, but it is noticeable.

The hunger is now painful in a way nothing ever was, eating him from every level, but he deserves it. For his crimes, atrocities and faults and freakishness, and he bears it with dignity, showing no trace of it in his behaviour and poise, even though his bones become easier and easier to see, and he’s always cold now.

Absently, he thinks he’s prettier like this, pale and deathly thin, bones easy to see and eerily reminiscent of his princess.

He dares not eat the Hougyoku even though that would destroy it, for how could he ever stop himself then, after a meal of such depth and delight? To resist the craving for reality to break and tear and become part of him, for time to become one with his consciousness? It is a last resort, to be done only if all else fails and there is no other way to stop Aizen.

He’d rather die than end the world, than let the princess raise him to be a sovereign of all, a monstrous king of nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Another weird work. I realised why I write such shitty stuff - I feel like shit and work through my feelings via writing.
> 
> What d'ya think? Should I continue this? Make it end happily? Tragically?
> 
> I've actually written two sort-of-continuations, and am planning a third. One is a 'good ending, everyone lives more or less happily', one is 'bittersweet', and the third is 'it all goes to hell'. Which do you want to know?


End file.
